In 2019, black and brown journalists will continue to leave predominantly white news organizations that undervalue and underpay for our work. Journalists of color and queer journalists will challenge the value of legacy organizations considered prestige brands who refuse to make room for diverse voices, even as they lift ideas from writers of color and queer culture without crediting them.
We will not apply to “diversity fellowships” that ask a single person of color to do the work of five journalists and an editor. We will call out those news and publishing organizations who brag about their “diversity hires” and we will point to their attrition rates for journalists of color.
We will create our own spaces. We have to. We often do not feel safe in our workplaces, walking an invisible line between job security and self-respect. We will search for ways to thrive, not just survive.
More journalists of color and queer journalists will establish platforms in new and emerging outlets — run by us. Funding mechanisms like Patreon and Pactio will help pay some of the bills.
In 2019, we will still write and delete draft tweets, still ask ourselves: Should I bite my tongue to keep my job, or say something to keep my sanity?
Seema Yasmin is cofounder of the Survival Kit for Journalists of Color and a former staff writer at The Dallas Morning News.
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local